The short term plan focussing on the stabilisation and empowerment of the municipality and looking into staff and relationship matters is ticked off as completed.
The medium term plan strategy to create stability within the municipality and to build a basis from where the municipality could function properly is reaching maturity.
The long term plan to secure investments to re-establish the infrastructure base and allow for the future expansion of services and growing the economy has started. This phase is mainly based on developing plans and funding arrangements and in mobilizing support from all sectors. This is an enormous task with an estimated R8 billion needed over the next five years.
In a nutshell general service delivery has improved, communication between the municipality and the public was put in place and accounts are being sorted out.
It has been a year since Mr Theo van Vuuren was appointed as the administrator of Emalahleni Local Municipality after the municipality stood on the brink of total disaster.
Van Vuuren will be handing his progress report to his advisory committee this week. From there the report will make its way to the upcoming council meeting and it will end up in a cabinet meeting where every fine detail of it will be discussed and scrutinised.
The man at the helm steering the boat into calmer waters compiled a summary of the state of the municipality when the reins thereof were handed to him.
“In April last year the municipality was dysfunctional and service delivery nearly came to a near standstill. All main services fell apart, whilst the municipality was characterised by labour unrest and its financial position reached critical proportions with an inability to pay creditors,” Van Vuuren described the situation.
A three phased intervention strategy was developed and adopted by council to guide the intervention.
“Since the intervention positive progress to stabilise the municipality and to create readiness to execute its service delivery responsibilities have been made. This progress was as a result of a joint effort by municipal staff, council leadership and the intervention team.
As a result the municipality is functioning again and a more constructive relationship between management and staff has been restored, with the local labour forum operational. Communication with the communities has been opened up and an interactive process of engagement is on-going,” Van Vuuren said. He said as service delivery challenges are overwhelming, a crisis management strategy was employed to create efficiency and effectiveness in respect of attending to delivery problems. The biggest issues in this respect was the uncoordinated and wasteful manner in which service delivery happened, the lack of equipment, abdication of management and unorganised staffing arrangements. The good news is that through attending to the vehicle plant, mobilising sufficient vehicles, reviewing the shift system and instilling a management culture, this situation has improved significantly.
Van Vuuren explained that the five pronged service delivery programme was also introduced to address the most burning issues in the community, ranging from cleaning the environment to restoring law and order. Positive community involvement in these programmes has been experienced and large parts of the municipality are starting to show the results of this approach. The addressing of the underlying causes to the situation is proving more difficult and despite limited funding but specifically a strong management leadership and council support, this process has gained momentum.
When it comes to the city’s coffers, a process of revenue enhancement and cleaning up its creditors and debtor’s books were launched. Progress has been positive, although the process to instil a culture of payment and to re-establish the data base is slow.
“One of the biggest challenges is the need to verify and install meters to all users. The cleaning up of the creditors also has made progress but more than R600million of old creditors have since been added which did not form part of the year-end balances,” said Van Vuuren.
He also cautioned that by no means is the city out of the woods yet, and a bleak winter in respect of electricity issues are expected. However, to address these and other chronic problems such as with sewer blockages, the municipal teams are tirelessly working to find solutions.
